


Derision

by crmsndragonwngs



Series: Seidou Week 2015 [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Academy days, F/M, Gen, Jealousy, akira-centric, somewhat slice of life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crmsndragonwngs/pseuds/crmsndragonwngs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seidou Week - Day 2<br/>Jealousy –envy, doubt, frustration</p>
            </blockquote>





	Derision

**Author's Note:**

> Derision - _noun_ \- contemptuous ridicule or mockery.

“Wow, you’re way strong.” Takizawa says as he picks himself up from the floor. Akira tosses her hair and glances around at the other pairs. Hand-to-hand combat, Shinohara-sensei had told them, is an important part of being a ghoul investigator. A human cannot match a ghoul’s strength, of course, but physical fitness and a good understanding of defense is essential in staying alive. Akira doesn’t really see the point when they can just use their quinques, but it gives her an excuse to kick Takizawa’s ass once a week, so she supposes it’s not such a bad waste of her time.

“No, you’re just weak.” She scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest. She realizes too late that she’s been too harsh, and the words seem to hit him harder than the kick that had sent him to the ground.

“I’m not weak.” He says softly, and she’s clearly crossed a line. She’s still trying to think of something to say when he squares up again, a coldness in his dark eyes that she’s never seen before. Something about it scares her.

\---

“Another perfect score, huh.” He says, unsurprised. It’s not a question, but Akira answers it anyway.

“I don’t know how. I was lost on the entire back page.” It’s a lie, and she can see that he knows it. Something black flickers in his cold eyes, and she wonders when his look had grown so hard and unforgiving. 

“Yeah right, the back page was nothing.” He says through a derisive snort.

“Well, what did you get?” She asks, pushing her test aside.

“It doesn’t matter.” He replies, looking at her and forcing a smile. “Wanna get lunch?” And she can tell he wants her to decline. She frowns, and decides to oblige him.

“Nah, I promised my dad I’d get lunch with him.” She smiles stiffly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He says, then turns and walks away.

\---

She isn’t surprised when the blow up finally happens. They’re in her apartment comparing their notes on the day’s lecture, and she can see the tension growing in his shoulders as he copies her diagrams. He’s halfway through the table she’d sketched to illustrate an idea she knew he’d have trouble with when he throws his pencil with an exasperated yell.

“God, why do you have to be so perfect all the time? Are you even fucking human?” He says, his voice high and wounded. She looks at him coolly, crossing her arms over her chest, and says nothing. He hisses. “Oh sure, ignore me. Big surprise there.” He throws his hands up and storms out of the room. She jumps when he slams the door behind him.

In truth, she doesn’t know why she can’t just take down her walls. She doesn’t know why she’s so mean to him, or why she can’t bring herself to admit she likes him. She knows it hurts him, but she doesn’t know how to change.

She stares at the door for a moment, then turns to look at his notes. She decides to leave them there in case he comes back for them, then decides she should probably tidy them for him to save him the embarrassment of slinking back into her apartment and clumsily gathering them himself. As she’s arranging the messy, haphazard sheets, she picks up an old test he’d been correcting for extra credit. She flips through it curiously, wondering which questions he’d missed.

She notices red marks on the essay questions (-.25 points on all four questions), and reads through them. His answers are good, and technically correct, but they lack insight. On the back, she reads the instructor’s feedback and sees her thoughts echoed there.

_Your answers are all correct, but very textbook, which is ultimately why I took a point off of your combined essay questions. I’d like to see a little more thought put into these questions on the final._

She shuffles through her own papers and finds her test, flipping to the back to the instructor’s notes.

_Excellent work Mado-san! You not only answered the written questions, but the unwritten ones as well. You’re going to make an exceptional investigator. And while I didn’t count off for this, do be sure to watch your grammar and spelling. Reports will need to be technically correct as well as insightful._

The assessment is a little unfair, but Akira can see why the instructor took off points. A good investigator should think outside of the facts. 

“He’s so smart, he just doesn’t let his gut feelings factor into his conclusions.” She murmurs softly, slipping the test into the center of the stack. She wonders if she should share her opinion with him, or if he’d take it the wrong way. 

\---

“Hey, Takizawa?” She calls softly as she approaches the table he’s eating at. He looks up at her and frowns.

“What do you want?” He grumbles and stares at his plate.

“I was wondering if you wanted to study together tonight.”

“What, so you can tell me again how my answers aren’t good enough?” He jeers, but she can tell his heart isn’t in it. She sits down next to him and pulls his notes out of her backpack.

“You left these at my place yesterday.” She says, offering them. He takes the stack and thumbs through it, then narrows his eyes suspiciously. 

“Did you look at the test?” She stares for a moment, wondering if her opinion would be welcome, but before she has a chance to speak he’s shaking his head. “You know, never mind. I’m not really in the mood to be called an idiot today.”

“You’re smart, you know.” She says softly, smiling when he shoots her another wary look. “I mean it. You just need to learn how to think with both your head and your gut.” He scoffs at that.

“There you go with your stupid intuition again.” He grumbles. “Anyway, I’m busy tonight, so I can’t study with you.” His tone stings, but she hides the hurt behind cold, placid eyes.

“Okay.” She says, her voice even, then shoulders her backpack and leaves him to his lunch. 

\---

She’s pleased when she earns valedictorian, even more so when Takizawa tells her he got salutatorian. 

“Looks like we’ll be sitting together at graduation.” She says, realizing she’d forgotten to smile when his face crumples.

“Yeah, I bet you’ll enjoy that. It’ll give you an opportunity to rub it in.”

“Rub what in?”

“That I’m always second best. Never good enough at anything.”

“I never said that.”

“Yeah, but you enjoy being better than me, don’t you?”

She wants to tell him no, that’s not true. She hates being the best because it puts so much pressure on her. She wants to tell him that she’s tired of being compared to her mother, of being told how much like her father she is.

“There’s nothing wrong with second best, you know.” She says instead, and she knows before he speaks that her consolation isn’t welcome.

“Only because you’ve never been there.” He snaps. She sighs at how ironic it is that she can never win with him.

They end up assigned to the same squad, and it hurts when she hears him tell the errand boy that she’s cold-blooded, more of a ghoul than the ghouls are. She’d known he resented her, but she hadn’t imagined that he hated her so much.

\---

(The truth of the matter is he’s overjoyed to see her there in the same office as him, ecstatic to hear she’s there for good, but when he opens his mouth he can’t stop the venom that pours out of it. He doesn’t know how they got to this point, and worse, he doesn’t know how to fix it, so he responds in the only way he knows how: by making it worse.

What he really wanted to tell her the day they’d found out they’d be sitting together at graduation was, “There’s no one I’d rather sit by.” What he really wanted to tell her was, and is, “If I have to be second best, I’m glad I’m second to you.” But he never does, does he? And he probably never will.)

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a very small part of a very large, self-gratifying fic that I will never post in its entirety. There are some worthy snippets, though, and I had this one in mind for this prompt since the first time I heard about Seidou week lol.
> 
> Anyway, it's very Akira-centric, but there's some Seidou-POV at the end. My headcanon with these two is that they started off friends and then Seidou slowly but steadily grew jealous of Akira. By the time the events of TG take place, he's grown so used to acting this way that it's second nature, and no matter how much he wishes he could change that he can't.


End file.
